On This Day In Alabama History: Troopers Attack Peaceful Marchers On Edmund Pettus Bridge
By Graydon Rust
Alabama 200
March 7, 1965
Alabama state troopers and county law enforcement officials attacked about 600 unarmed activists as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Ordered to stop the march by Gov. George Wallace, state troopers deployed 40 canisters of tear gas, 12 cans of smoke and eight cans of nausea gas as they beat marchers with billy clubs, causing injuries that sent 56 of the marchers to hospitals. Televised images of the event, which came to be known as Bloody Sunday, shocked viewers across the world and caused an outpouring of support that ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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